We study the effect of the fragmentation of intellectual property rights on optimal patent design. The major finding is that when several complementary innovative components must be assembled to operate a new technology, the patentability requirements should be stronger than in the case of...

We study the effect of the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime of a host country (South) on a multinational's decision between serving a market via greenfield foreign direct investment to avoid the exposure of its technology or entering a joint venture (JV) with a local firm, which allows...